For many months, I knew that something horrible was haunting Sophie. Finally, one quiet night, she broke down and told me all of the details about that awful dilemma she faced several years before, while she was a prisoner in a concentration camp. Sophie had arrived at the camp with…
The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) supplies high school LGBT rights groups around the United States with a wealth of useful information, tools, and event and activity guides. For the last few years, I’ve appreciated the planning guides GLSEN provides as a source of brainstorming and public-relations hints. But looking through a GLSEN binder of open forum topics and public speaking tips recently, I came across an unusual and off-putting suggestion:
“Do NOT compare the LGBT Rights movement to the Civil Rights movement.”
Wait, what? The battle for LGBT rights mirrors the Civil Rights movement in a variety of ways. The reactionary backlash and lack of logic behind opponents’ arguments read exactly the same, complete with desperate biblical references. Take for example this judge’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia, a pre-Civil-Rights case on interracial marriage:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
Indeed, and Almighty God also created Adam and Eve, not, as the social conservatives say, Adam and Steve. The slow social acceptance and increase in violent hate crimes look much the same, too. So what differentiates Gay Rights from Civil Rights, again?
Well, nothing really. It just ruffles a lot of (black, evangelical) feathers to make the comparison. Apparently GLSEN doesn’t …
A few years ago, a play written by Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”, “Munich”), titled “Homebody/Kabul” was staged in America. It tells the tale of a frustrated British housewife, who tries to overcome the monotony that engulfs her everyday life by escaping into her perceptions of Afghanistan, a mystical land which she claims accounted for the ‘dawn of civilization’. Her perceptions of the country are based on travel book, which obviously presents a white-washed picture of the country.
Though the play was staged after the 9/11 attacks, it was written well before it. Hence, there are no references to the attack, but there are plenty of references to the Taliban. Nevertheless, once the housewife (named ‘Ms. Homebody’) travels to Afghanistan, she disappears. Her husband and daughter, who follow her to Afghanistan in search of her, are shocked to find an Afghanistan completely different from the one their wife had talked to them about. It is a country steeped in poverty and utter misogyny.
Though I have read reviews of the play, it has not been staged anywhere in the vicinity of my country (India), and hence, I haven’t seen it. But I urge anybody lucky enough to be living in America make use of any opportunity you have to see the play (note that I said “lucky enough to be living in America”; an interesting precursor to what I’m about to say), as this play deals with tendency of many people (particularly liberals) to become cynical of their culture, and …
Today's Associated Press report on the deposition testimony a former FDA commissioner sheds further light on the FDA's extended and shameful failure to approve "Plan B," the morning after pill. According to the recent testimony: The Food and Drug Administration had intended to allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B last year…
I’ve always been a fan of Val Lewton films, and I recently discovered a “new” one which can be enjoyed for reasons which go beyond the Lewton trademark cinematography and low-budget creativity. The Ghost Ship (dir. Mark Robson, 1943) was pulled from theaters almost immediately after its release due to…